Religion Dispatches
…Whether the movement will result in a fully liberal democratic state remains to be seen, but because it is being led by a younger generation who tend to be more open, we can remain hopeful. However, class continues to play a huge role in this movement, and there is no clear positivist political platform yet. The interview is fairly nuanced and really worth listening to….
Read More…ingle family homes along a tree lined cul-da-sac, shots of vaguely working class people, and images of Pawlenty himself. Pawlenty sets up himself and these “everyday Americans” as the symbols of the Puritan-American work ethic. Finally, our exceptionalism and our hard work give Americans a special destiny. The third myth in the ad is Manifest Destiny, the narrative from American history that argues a special purpose for our country to spread its i…
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…ive, as in: A drop of pond water under the microscope just like in science class but now you are the pond and the microscope is mindfulness. A true seer, Levine’s poetry is visionary. He can write ballads or hymns with profound clarity and timeless heart, such as “If prayer would do it,” “When human beings meditate,” “There is an elemental love,” and “There is a silence between breaths.” Such poetry is also a form of teaching, that pure poetry thr…
Read More…bundance and, well, betterness. But when he’s on the other end of the microphone, being asked questions about homosexuality, you can see the discomfort wash over him. The ladies on The View cornered him on the subject back in 2009, and his evasive answer was that homosexuality was not “God’s best” for such people. He retreated to the tired “some of his closest friends are gay, and that they tend to be ‘some of the nicest people in the world.’” Jus…
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…womb, at which point, as Martin Luther King pointed out, they might, given class or racial barriers from birth, very well be left without a bootstrap to pull themselves up by. King’s niece, Alveda King, who appeared at last year’s Glenn Beck rally on the anniversary of the March on Washington, has endorsed the use of her uncle’s name, insisting that today he would be called a “social conservative.” In fact, King strongly supported Planned Parentho…
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…; in Turkey, some who refused to change their clothes were executed). In a number of Arab and Muslim states, you can go to the beach, get a drink, skip prayers, and walk around with your hair down. You just can’t expect that your vote will matter. Tonight, in one less country, it seems that may no longer be the case. That government was overbearing, it overreached, and now, it seems to be over. Let us pay less attention to the visibility of their…
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…. As Loughner explains, algebra is free. Charging a student for an algebra class amounts to selling a free product and is a scam. If the world worked properly, grammar and currency would convey real value without distortion. But because of government practices of mind control and currency fraud, they do not. As a way out of these misrepresentations, individuals need to learn to dream, a practice that he labels “conscience dreaming.” This dreaming…
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…were going to sound yet more unattainable, I would point to the Princeton class of ’48 poets, Galway Kinnell and W. S. Merwin. What’s your next book? I am toying with three topics: The first is to play out the history of the study of religion in American culture—not so much as a history of the discipline, but as a history of a broad area of inquiry and fascination, again for amateurs as much as bona fide professionals. This is a project at an ea…
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…l Center of Witchcraft? Witches adapted to a free market quickly. Emerging businesses sought their aide, creating a growing clientele for witchcraft. In 1997, there was an attempt to form a “witches’ union,” in part to counter the claims of dozens of upstart witches that they were descendants of Mama Omida. In 1999, there was even a plan to build a thirty-five room “national center of witchcraft” on the outskirts of Bucharest. However, the witche…
Read More…assault on a student. The litany of Freshwater’s religious activity in the classroom goes back more than a decade and includes him displaying posters of the Ten Commandments and bible versus and teaching students in science class that evolution is a lie. After the parents of Zachary Dennis complained to the district about the burn on their son’s arm way back in December 2007, the district began an investigation, in which Freshwater’s religious pro…
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